Emergency situations regularly result from high speed collisions between vehicles, especially motor vehicles, and other vehicles and stationary objects. In a significant number of severe motor vehicle accidents, occupants who need immediate medical attention become trapped within a damaged vehicle. Often, the occupants cannot be extricated by emergency personnel without the assistance of specialized vehicle extraction equipment.
In other situations, conventional entry methods may be blocked, obscured, or otherwise anomalously oriented as compared to the vehicle's normal operating orientation, for example, if vehicle is turned on its side, but emergency personnel may nonetheless access the occupants. First responders such as Emergency Medical Services (EMS) personnel, firefighters, and police officers are often the first people at the scene, so it is critical that these individuals are well-trained in the art of vehicle extrication in a wide range of potential transportation-related emergency scenarios. Occupant survival may hinge on the skill and preparedness of the first responder.
Conventional training techniques do not adequately prepare first responders for the tasks they may face at the scene of a vehicle emergency. One common technique is for the instructor to position a manikin (or another person) in a chair in a classroom, where the instructor will instruct a trainee and any onlookers to pretend that the manikin is a victim in need of medical attention that is trapped in a vehicle. The trainee will then use the rescue techniques learned in the class on the manikin with the imaginary emergency scenario in mind. This method is flawed in several respects. To start, it heavily relies on the imaginative powers of the trainees to visualize the context of the simulated environment, and may be ineffective if the trainees do not take the exercise seriously. Also, the exercise does not provide a realistic training scenario because there are no physical obstacles such as a vehicle frame, a steering column, a dashboard, and the like that the trainee would invariably encounter in a real-world rescue situation. Still further, the method provides limited ability to alter the positioning of the simulated victim beyond an upright, level orientation.
Another conventional training technique is to use an actual vehicle for the exercises, such as a car from a junk yard, that is modified for training purposes. This technique is more realistic because the trainee is working within the confines of a motor vehicle and must therefore overcome physical obstacles to perform the rescue exercise. But there are also many drawbacks. Like the chair method, the use of an actual vehicle limits the opportunity to alter the orientation of the victim because an actual vehicle is too heavy to turn on its side or top, and even if it were repositioned, it may lack sufficient stability in the repositioned state to safely conduct the training. The sheer size of the vehicle also necessitates an outdoor or garage environment, which is inconvenient if the class is normally held in a classroom. Further, while the trainee actually performing the simulated rescue may have a valuable learning experience, training with an actual vehicle is of little benefit to onlookers because the car frame will obscure their view. This aspect also impairs the instructor's ability to train in the actual vehicle, because the instructor's view may also be obscured, thus limiting the instructor's capacity to provide meaningful feedback to the trainee.
It is common for training courses to use a mix of these techniques, where the primary learning takes place in the classroom with a chair simulation, but the class has one or a few opportunities to practice the techniques introduced and practiced in the classroom with an actual vehicle. Still, even the combination of these methods does not sufficiently prepare trainees, because training time with the actual vehicle (the more realistic training tool) is limited, and depending on class size and access to the vehicle, there may not be sufficient time allotted for each trainee to have a training session in the vehicle, let alone multiple sessions.
Accordingly, those skilled in the art continue to seek improved devices and techniques to simulate transportation related emergency situations in the classroom environment to train and prepare EMS personnel and other first responders.